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If you ask for "TV Transmitted" than this is exactly what you get.
The director didn't screw up, he simply and faithfully relied on a TV sets' overscan to trim the redundant areas on all four edges of the image.
As far as I can tell "Sins of the Father" is the only TNG episode on Blu-ray which respects what the director intended and expected audiences to see (because the overscan effect was taken into consideration).

@ Hober Mallow

Star Trek is the Art of Entertainment and not the Art of Cinematography.
You had renowned TV directors and a lot of first-timers but this can't possibly compare to acclaimed theatrical directors like Awesome Wells, Michael Curtiz, Stanley Kubrick and others where careful and subtle picture composition was truly a form of art (for which the TNG directors simply did not have the time).
And frankly I'm really getting tired of the Mona Lisa comparisons, it's really not appropriate to compare the accomplishments of Leonardo Da Vinci with what is essentially a TV show, IMHO. (though I do love TNG).

Bob

__________________
"The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth" Jean-Luc Picard
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." Albert Einstein

And frankly I'm really getting tired of the Mona Lisa comparisons, it's really not appropriate to compare the accomplishments of Leonardo Da Vinci with what is essentially a TV show, IMHO. (though I do love TNG).

True, one is a bunch of splashes of paint on a canvas made by a single person, while the other is 176 living stories created and recreated by a team of hundreds of people with great care and precision.

And frankly I'm really getting tired of the Mona Lisa comparisons, it's really not appropriate to compare the accomplishments of Leonardo Da Vinci with what is essentially a TV show, IMHO. (though I do love TNG).

True, one is a bunch of splashes of paint on a canvas made by a single person, while the other is 176 living stories created and recreated by a team of hundreds of people with great care and precision.

It's all a matter of opinion

If the goal is to get the stories out to the masses so they can enjoy them. Then it should be important to offer it in a way that they want to consume it.

Full-frame is fine for someone like me, born in 1971 and accustomed to the format. Another five or ten years, you're going to have kids who are being born and will have never been exposed to 4:3 programming and keeping TNG framed as a 4:3 presentation only will make it look out of step with current programming.

I want TNG and the rest of Trek to live on, not fall by the wayside because of aspect ratio.

Full-frame is fine for someone like me, born in 1971 and accustomed to the format. Another five or ten years, you're going to have kids who are being born and will have never been exposed to 4:3 programming and keeping TNG framed as a 4:3 presentation only will make it look out of step with current programming.

Just like no one today enjoys movies made before 1950 or so because all of those movies are in a 4:3 or similar format.

Using the zoom feature on your Blu-ray remote does that for you. The choice is literally at your fingertips already. If CBS-D were to create 16x9 versions, it wouldn't look any better than zooming it yourself. Heads would be chopped off, the saucer of the Enterprise would be chopped off, etc.

No, that's not right at all.

When a studio does the cropping, it's usually done in a "smart" way, with at least some attempt made at shot composition. Depending on what's important in a given scene, the general wisdom is to position the matte just above the heighest head.

I'll grant you it's probably possible to make a decent looking widescreen version of the show. I still don't get why fans would want the show chopped up in the first place.

Would sawing off the top and bottom of the Mona Lisa provide observers with a fuller experience? Would chopping off the left and right sides of Picasso's La Guernica to fit a frame it was never intended to fit make for a better art viewing experience? I just don't get it, and clearly I never will.

As I said in my original post, I find the cropping of 4:3 material pretty unpalatable too!

Also, I can actually spell "highest" - lord knows how I managed to get "heighest" in my post. Major boob!

__________________YOU MONOTONE HUMANS ARE ALL ALIKE... FIRST YOU CONDEMN, THEN ATTACK.

Full-frame is fine for someone like me, born in 1971 and accustomed to the format. Another five or ten years, you're going to have kids who are being born and will have never been exposed to 4:3 programming and keeping TNG framed as a 4:3 presentation only will make it look out of step with current programming.

Just like no one today enjoys movies made before 1950 or so because all of those movies are in a 4:3 or similar format.

Wait....

But you have to admit, that those people are a fairly small group. Audiences are dying and being replaced by younger ones. Ten years from now, the likely available content of black & white material will be even smaller because you'll have fewer people who were ever exposed to the material to begin with.

So, you can either "future proof" shows like TNG or you consign them to ever shrinking audiences and the day will come when there will be no one watching. I'd rather there be folks watching TNG which has a 16:9 aspect ratio than no one watching TNG at all. YMMV.

I think all of the "future proofing" it needs is what it's getting a clearer, HD, format with some SFX tweaks. I mean why not "future proof" movies like Casablanca into a 16:9 picture? Sure you'll utterly destroy a masterpiece of a movie but, hey, future audiences won't have some pesky black-bars on their screen.

I would hope future audiences would will be smart enough to understand that when TNG (and other shows made before around 2000) was made 4:3 was the standard. Just like we know that be the case with older movies just like black and white, stop-motion special effects and every other technique that is outdated and quaint today.

I'm able to get my 10-year-old niece to watch TNG in 4:3 without any problems and she only asked me once why there were black bars on the sides, "Because that's just how shows were made back then." "Oh." and we watched on.

I hope future generations would be the same and rather see a 4:3 screen than seeing filming and lighting equipment on the edge of the scree for the sake of "filling the screen."

Why is this obsession here, by the way? Why not demand that ALL media be cropped and edited to 16:9? I mean most movies aren't filmed in that format leaving us with black bars on home media even on wide-screen TVs. Dammit! They should cop that shit up because future generations won't stand for some slightly annoying if you think about them too much black bars!

I think that's the major difference when comparing B&W/Color and Widescreen/4:3. There isn't a magic "colorize" button on your media player or TV. There is a zoom/stretch button available on almost every media player or TV.

I think all of the "future proofing" it needs is what it's getting a clearer, HD, format with some SFX tweaks. I mean why not "future proof" movies like Casablanca into a 16:9 picture? Sure you'll utterly destroy a masterpiece of a movie but, hey, future audiences won't have some pesky black-bars on their screen.

How are you destroying "masterpieces" by offering audiences options on how they watch entertainment? I've seen no one in favor of 16:9 versions saying that the 4:3 versions need to be burned.

Did they destroy TOS and TNG by offering multiple audio tracks for home theater enthusiasts? Why is it okay to disrespect the work of the audio engineers who put the shows together in the sixties and eighties?

How are you destroying "masterpieces" by offering audiences options on how they watch entertainment? I've seen no one in favor of 16:9 versions saying that the 4:3 versions need to be burned.

You're arguing that that the show needs to be cropped/edited to fit a 16x9 format because future audiences will not tolerate watching it any other way. So if you do that then you've, effectively, "destroyed" the originals since now no one will watch the originals they'll watch these ones that "fill their screen" and meet their expectations. Sure the original versions will still "exist" but in an outdated format and likely in an outdated media with no player for them if we're talking about truly future generations.

If the only thing available to watch is this new format then, yeah, you've destroyed the originals because they no longer matter they might as well be destroyed.

You're arguing that that the show needs to be cropped/edited to fit a 16x9 format because future audiences will not tolerate watching it any other way. So if you do that then you've, effectively, "destroyed" the originals since now no one will watch the originals they'll watch these ones that "fill their screen" and meet their expectations. Sure the original versions will still "exist" but in an outdated format and likely in an outdated media with no player for them if we're talking about truly future generations.

If the only thing available to watch is this new format then, yeah, you've destroyed the originals because they no longer matter they might as well be destroyed.

I completely disagree.

So, do you think it was wrong of them to offer multiple audio tracks for home theater enthusiasts? Obviously, the original audio engineers didn't intend for their work to be heard in 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound. They built it to be heard by the available audio equipment of the day.

You're arguing that that the show needs to be cropped/edited to fit a 16x9 format because future audiences will not tolerate watching it any other way. So if you do that then you've, effectively, "destroyed" the originals since now no one will watch the originals they'll watch these ones that "fill their screen" and meet their expectations. Sure the original versions will still "exist" but in an outdated format and likely in an outdated media with no player for them if we're talking about truly future generations.

If the only thing available to watch is this new format then, yeah, you've destroyed the originals because they no longer matter they might as well be destroyed.

I completely disagree.

So, do you think it was wrong of them to offer multiple audio tracks for home theater enthusiasts? Obviously, the original audio engineers didn't intend for their work to be heard in 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound. They built it to be heard by the available audio equipment of the day.

If putting the audio on a better track completely changed the way the show sounded I would agree. If it made it so you could now hear elements of production like the director yelling "cut!" or hear the plywood sets scraping on one another I would agree.

But that doesn't happen. It just sounds better is all. Just like putting it in HD it makes it look better.

Putting in widescreen would completely change the show, completely change the composition of shots, the framing and even reveal elements of production in the case of how TNG was filmed.

Putting in widescreen would completely change the show, completely change the composition of shots, the framing and even reveal elements of production in the case of how TNG was filmed.

But, go ahead, compare apples and oranges.

As Maxwell Everett has shown, you can crop the show and none of the production elements would be any more visible than they were in the 4:3 presentation.

It's not an apples and oranges comparison. You've decided it's okay to change one persons work so it is more enjoyable with modern technology but are completely against doing the same thing with another persons work because you disagree with the change. The audio tracks were built to be listened to with the equipment of the time, just like the video was done with a certain way of viewing in mind (nevermind that with overscan we are already seeing the picture in a way that wasn't intended).

I've never seen people who are convinced allowing viewers to make their own choices is a bad thing and to be avoided at all costs.

It was originally shot to be 4:3 if they did 16:9 they'd either have to do one of two things:

1. Simply use a wider film exposure. However, this may reveal crew, equipment, and other elements of production just off camera.

2. Crop the picture. This would remove elements from the top/bottom of the picture which would alter the original episode and director's intent for the scene.

The show was show shot to be seen on a 4:3 screen and that's the way we should watch it. People need to stop this obsession with "filling their screen" with a picture.

Ahh, so I'm guessing that Seinfeld was shot with a different framing in mind then?

I don't mind that it's shot that way, but I was under the impression that it was shot on film and therefore it could translate. Deep Space 9 was shot differently?

I don't know what Seinfeld has to do with this. But if there's a 16:9 version of Seinfeld out there/coming it's likely due to a number of reasons. Sitcoms are filmed differently than hour-long programs especially since Sitcoms are often one-camera shows. (You put the camera in one place and let the scene unfold. As opposed to multiple cameras for close-ups, reaction shots, different angles, etc.) If there's a 16:9 version of Seinfeld coming then, yes, it probably was "shot differently" to allow this to happen. Or they're going to crop the picture.

But we DO know TNG was shot for a 4:3 picture. Film or not has nothing to do with it. As the above link shows there's all sorts of bullshit outside of the picture that could be seen or gleamed in a 16:9 picture. So why mess with it?

Further, I also stand by "director's intent."

Not true. Seinfeld was a traditional multi-cam sitcom. TNG was single-cam. Multi-cam is quicker and cheaper because you can capture multiple angles of any scene in one take, whereas single-cam necessitates a setup for each new angle the director wants. And neither multi-cam nor single-cam have anything to do with aspect ratios.

As Maxwell Everett has shown, you can crop the show and none of the production elements would be any more visible than they were in the 4:3 presentation.

While it's true that CBS-D has had to, on occasion, erase production equipment from certain shots or even subtly reframe shots in certain cases, my examples show that a 16:9 version of TNG would be even wider than TV Transmitted, so even more objects would be revealed, causing an even bigger headache for CBS-D. Again, go to 3:44 in each video and take notice of the white bounce board that is visible in 16:9 but not 4:3.

I'm afraid that I threw gasoline on the fire here. In any case, one of the primary reasons they are sticking to 4:3 is that in many of the filmed miniature elements the guys at Image G were sometimes framing using the full camera aperture and there simply isn't anymore image left to reveal! You've all seen this video from the Energized! doc... look at the rounded corners in some of the Enterprise elements -- that's a hard matte in the camera, there's nothing left to show!

__________________"Shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion." -Thomas Jefferson